Brian Pollack, a buyer for Kelman Scrap looks over one of the engines his company bought during and auction at the Scotia Glenville Industrial Park in Scotia, N.Y. Dec 13, 2012. (Skip Dickstein/Times Union)

The 20 cars and locomotives that, for almost a decade, have rusted in an industrial park were auctioned off Thursday.

Now the former Amtrak trains, which went from state-of-the-art status to a symbol of government incompetence, will be cut apart with welding torches and hauled off for scrap.

State officials vowed to get rid of the trains and related parts, which cost more than $150,000 annually in rented storage space. On Thursday, they said they were happy to be rid of the '70s-era Turboliners.

The auctioneer took bids both on-line and in person at the grassy Scotia-Glenville Industrial park, completing the auction in about a half hour.

Combined with an auction Tuesday of spare parts housed in a Rotterdam warehouse, the sale brought in about $420,000.

Starting last summer, the Cuomo administration used the rusting trains as a real-life backdrop to what they say is a drive to make state government operate more sensibly and efficiently and get away from some of the absurdities of the past.

In the 1990s, the trains were touted as the dawn of high-speed rail in the Empire State as well as a boon to the Schenectady area, where they were refurbished in what was a Super Steel plant.

The trouble was, the 125-mph trains, which used turbine engines similar to those powering helicopters, tended to overheat – one attendee at Thursday's auction said he heard that an engine once began melting an overpass under which it had been parked – and Amtrak mechanics weren't trained to work on the exotic European designs.

Moreover, the tracks between Albany and New York City were never upgraded for high speed. Add in their thirst for fuel and the Turboliners were deemed unworkable and sidelined.

Early on, Cuomo officials figured they might end up as scrap and they were right. During a press tour to lay out plans for the trains, they became known as the Trains to Nowhere.

One of Thursday's buyers, Brian Pollack, who bid for NH Kelman Scrap Recycling in Cohoes, said his company went for the engines due to the sheer amount of metal – between 75 and 110 tons in each – that could be extracted.

In addition to the handful of recyclers, Tom Romano, who had worked on the refurbishment at Super Steel, showed up with a scrapbook of the trains when they emerged from the shop in 1998.

"It was a waste," said Romano, who worked as an assembler, bolting the undercarriage and other assorted parts onto the cars.